1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
In recent years, in accompaniment with the spread of electrophotographic color image forming apparatus, demands with respect to increasing the speed of color output have risen in addition to demands with respect to the printing quality of color images, and several image forming systems have been proposed in order to meet these demands. Among these, a configuration called tandem system is known. Among tandem system color image forming apparatus, there is a configuration where toner images of the respective colors of black, cyan, magenta, and yellow are formed on photoreceptor drums of these respective colors and the toner images are sequentially transferred to and superposed on recording paper conveyed by a transfer belt to form a full-color toner image on the recording paper.
Within a tandem system color image forming apparatus of this configuration, the temperatures of the plural photoreceptor drums increase and these temperature increases become synergistic, so that it becomes easy for the temperature inside the apparatus to rise particularly in an apparatus that is made compact by shortening the distances between the photoreceptor drums. Further, when two-sided printing is continuously performed, one side of the recording paper is printed and the recording paper passes through a fixing device whose temperature is high, and the recording paper again passes through the image forming section in a state where the recording paper is hot, which leads to an increase in the temperature inside the apparatus.
Because of such circumstances, it has been necessary to design tandem system color image forming apparatus such that the increase in temperature inside the apparatus body is sufficiently taken into consideration. Cooling the photoreceptor drums and the development section in particular has been important.